Um. Doesn't that mean there is global PvP? If there was no PvP no one would be able to kill other players; if anyone can kill anyone then PvP is anywhere and everywhere.

My video game, hunh? Hm...

I'll probably have to edit this post a few times to flesh it out gradually, so some notes for reference if I have to come back to it later: Mount & Blade (factions, mapping, travel), Dynasty Warriors (combat framework), Actraiser (population management, quest format), Minecraft (expansive randomly-generating worlds). Note that I'm not meaning to just cannibalize and compile the actual games, just some general ideas to work with.

So, to the game idea.

Venture Capital (I dunno, first thing that came to mind)

Open-world adventuring game with a general pre-electricity setting - not specifically medieval or "traditional" fantasy. Theme is malleable, adapting according to player actions and creative decisions - customizable. RPG elements of character customization both aesthetically and statistically, stats determining mainly health, damage, accuracy, movement speed, charisma (more on this later).

Combat is 3D-brawleresque with smooth movement and combination attacks a la Dynasty Warriors, though ideally with fewer weapon choices and each weapon having a wider variety of techniques overall rather than DW's mass of weapons that all have just one chain of attacks each. Maybe entire strings of weak/medium/strong attacks that can be interwoven to create different effects (crowd-clearing, stuns, launchers, high damage, etc.).

Worlds are as large as player dictates at start of scenario limited by disk space, basically Minecraft-like where the world just generates more terrain/features as you explore it until you reach the established boundaries. Factions can be customized at start of scenario or left to randomized placement, up to 5 to start with more created through splintering later on. (Note that this includes splinter factions from your own group should you ever gain power over a faction.) The fewer total factions in the game the more likely cultural tensions within a given faction lead to rebellious outbursts and splits.

Equipment customization has no effect on stats - there's no epic +20 sword of asskickery to grind for at the endgame. Instead, equipment choices mainly provide different arrays of options: a spear has longer reach than a sword, but it's less useful at extremely close range; a scythe has nearly a spear's range and is more effective against multiple opponents given its sweeping attacks, but it's heavier and swings slower; etc. Variations between members of the same group (ie: all swords, all spears, and so on) are mostly aesthetic, though better-quality weapons are more capable of piercing armor and tend to be lighter weight for faster movement. Note about the armor-piercing: this doesn't increase the damage of the weapons, it's more or less a straight check of weapon material against the target it's striking. A wooden spear is not going to penetrate platemail armor. You can still beat the shit out of someone in armor, but it's essentially a staff or club for all the damage it's doing. Conversely, a steel sword against leather armor can penetrate and do its damage. System extrapolates from there.

While I envision this as a single-player game (because I tend to play games alone, even MMO's), if it has a multiplayer mode this pretty much removes the end-game raiding grind as it currently exists as there's no special gear to grind for - there's no grind-to-grind-better mechanic in the game, at least not as the endgame. I'm sure it will have some kind of progressing element in it at some point to improve a character, but I'm fuzzy on how far that would go.

Morality system: there isn't one, not in the sense of "act like a douchebag for Renegade points" anyway. The morality system is just your sense of morality. You'll have options that aren't clearly defined as "pick one of these three," mainly in determining how to govern a faction or, earlier on, how to gain power if you want it. You could try to climb the societal ranks through economic gains, marriage, deception, rebellion, blackmail, independent leadership (starting your own group), loyal service, royal lineage (new character in the family line of old character), basically the same ways people get power in the real world. When following rumors or hearing about jobs (the game's equivalent of quests) you aren't code-bound to actually complete the quest. It's just information to use as you wish. For example, you heard merchants have been raided by bandits on the northern road for months? You could get all heroic and kill/arrest the bandits and return the stolen goods; you could do the same while pocketing some for yourself; you could simply kill off the bandits and take over their territory, or join the band yourself and take part in some raiding on the roads. Or you could lose.

Now, in most RPGs, losing tends to mean death. Death is still a possibility, of course; getting into a fight with a pack of wolves in the woods is a good way to get your throat torn out, for instance. But picking a fight with a pack of bandits and finding out much too late that you're in over your head? Well, particularly if your previously mentioned charisma score is on the high side, you could end up with a rather more colorful fate to endure a while. I can't detail it here - public section of the site - but I would envision some writing and art set aside just for such situations (bandits being only one of these: a coup might end in enslavement by the successful party, for instance, or at the end of a war, etc.) to provide adequate flavor and substance rather than a token "you are captured and enslaved for X months." Nothing overly drawn-out; no one wants to get stuck in cutscene hell just because they lost. It'd be something of a minigame itself, allowing for periodic escape attempts as the days go by with bits of character interaction opportunities here and there, chances to turn members of the capturing party to your side to turn things around, making it part of the game rather than just "the pervy section" adult elements of games usually seem to be. Obviously this feature should be able to be turned off and locked as well for those who aren't interested in that kind of thing and/or worry about their kids getting into messier trouble than they should.

Oh, and no, charisma isn't just to measure your Molestation Likelihood, that's just a consequence of it. The main role of charisma factors into your political and diplomatic dealings, both with other diplomats in speeches and in winning over your subjects in public appearances and the like. It's personality and aura as much as appearances, more so even: a physically unattractive person can still have a certain magnetism about them. This is a quality of tremendous importance for any character who intends to do more than adventure around - good luck trying to win over and control an entire kingdom for long if all you have going for you is fear and strength. You need political sway to be an effective leader. It just has the added consequence (or bonus, depending on how you want to play the game) of possible alternative outcomes to failure in some situations, as mentioned previously.

Hey, I'm trying to make my ideal game here. Sue me for having carnal interests. ;p

City construction is very pared-down, M&B/Actraiser style. If you have a sufficient following and/or sufficient population to settle a new area you can start out with a small village and direct its development in the broad strokes, determining what direction the infrastructure should grow and funding that construction as it goes. There would be a number of aesthetic themes to start with and more could be unlocked through various feats accomplished in the game or added as custom-made mods/addons. (Sidenote: while in my ideal the art style of the game would be along the lines of Vindictus and Lineage 2, I'm aware not everyone is a fan of that kind of art, so the game would have underlying "themes" that could be swapped in, maybe one with a more cel-shaded toony look, one that's more simplified altogether for better performance with less artistic emphasis, etc., the way Minecraft texture packs can swap entire world schemes.) Professions can be developed once the proper apparatus are constructed (forge for smithing, mill for carpentry, etc.), but if the player character doesn't own territory they can work on these skills in any town with the proper facilities for a fee.

Materials can be located in specific sites rather than found at random nodes scattered around the world: go to the woods to gather wood, go to a mine for minerals, blah blah. To shorten gathering times, rather than just clicking on a tree and waiting for a bar to fill for 5 seconds or whatever then collecting wood, gathering would involve little minigames that increase in difficulty as your proficiency increases. Why more difficult? Because your haul increases the better you do in these games. Rough example of how this would work: at skill level 0 you get a little rhythm game for chopping wood (it wouldn't really be a rhythm game as I hate those, but I'm drawing a blank on what makes a chopping-resemblance minigame at the moment that isn't one) and doing it perfectly nets you 10 wood and 10 skill points. Every 10 points you get a harder version of the game, so the next time you go to get wood it's tougher, but you play that one perfectly too; this time you get 20 wood and 10 skill points. The next time you only get half the beats right on the 3rd tier minigame: you get 25 wood and 5 skill points. Even if you failed the minigame you'd get a minimum of 20 wood (but no skill increase) since that's the max you would have gotten in the previous game. Eventually you'd be getting ten times the wood in one visit that you would've when you started out, maybe more depending on just how hard these games were. It makes gathering more of an activity but also shortens the time you spend just getting stuff you need to build the things you want. This seems, in theory at least, like a win-win mechanic to me.

I'm loathe to include romance options with NPCs. It seems...hollow. I know I included assault possibilities above, but that's a conflict thing, that's what opposition is for, that's why there are NPCs in games. Romance options with NPCs feel like manipulation to me, I dunno. There would, however, be options for family creation, at the least. Establishing bloodlines, family territory, all that jazz. The multiplayer mode would include more extensive interaction options with other PCs, both peaceful familial/romantic options and "alternative" relationships - after all, it could be one PC is with those bandits from before and another is with one of the merchant caravans they raid, and where might we end up then?

One of the problems I have with sandbox games is that there's no clear goal or ending. The goal part is hard to outright solve, but the ending at least can come into play with aging. Eventually you'll grow too old not to retire, though how fast time passes in the game can be adjusted from 1 month passing each real-time day to making the game run 1:1 with reality. Time goes on, you have to get your affairs in order and, one day, you'll die, at which point the game offers to let you survey all that you accomplished in your lifetime, as much or little as that was. Snapshots of key events, summarized biographical reading of your deeds, general standing in the world by the end, that sort of thing, as well as the stats layout for the folks who love to drool over their kill counts and the like.

Speaking of death, this game? There's no respawning. There's no save-scumming. It's in "hardcore" mode. You save when you quit, and saving without quitting doesn't let you back up to load - saves are just there to protect against Critical Game Failure, basically, so that your game isn't lost in a power outage or a crash or similar. If you screw up saving your kingdom and it's overthrown, my condolences, but that's the way of the world. Best of luck winning it back the hard way.

Might add more to this later, but that actually fleshed out better in one go than I expected it would.

We shall be buried in the darkest of sands. Forgotten. Wilted. As the very taint takes you. The time itself seems dead and forgotten.

Genre: RPG Dark Fantasy-Sandbox

Plot: The threshold of humanity is beginning to break, as The Defaced are born again stronger than before. Years ago, a plague or blight appeared and The Defaced began to show. The Defaced were created by the poisoning of magic, men's own desires wicked tainting them into horrendous creatures that are neither the undead and neither demons. Something in between. As if revived a new life. As a warrior of this land you are called to action to serve and destroy the Defaced. Or give into the many and numerous options to become just as tainted as the Defaced. In the end you will only be fighting for own side.

Mechanics: I always liked the idea of being able to decline things. In RPs its either decline or not do it. But there really isn't a RPG that allows you to decline and change the face of the story.Like let's say the King came over to your house.

King, "You have to save the world,"

You, "Not my problem,"

King will try to convince you again. You can finalize your decline and the face of the game changes, there may be an attack on the farm you live. Or some other form of call to action that can set you out on your merry way. And you'd have the option of heading to the king of being a freelancer. You'll meet several plot choices, and each decision you voice can change the way you play the story.

This game would have multiple endings. And multiple play throughs, as I would take DAO's system of Origins. And each race and class has a special Origins story.

Most of my combat would be a little slow, like hardened sword play like in Oblivion.

But I'd add some things like from Fable 3, like spellweaving. Being able to combine elements if you're a gray mage.

I'd love to have a game that's sort of similar to The Sims but is more free roam/rpg. It would have different areas to explore, and you could make your own characters that could interact with others while still being able to do daily things. A mature rating would be nice (since the woo hoo in bed on The Sims just doesn't do it for me).

Combat: Closely resembles Ar Tonelico Qoga: The Knell of Ar Ciel (Active, free-running battles take place in a stage. One character is stationary and channeling powerful magic while vanguard characters protect them from interruption.) Modifications include every character being able to serve both roles, the inclusion of stagger, stun and juggle mechanics and (potentially) less stripping. Still debating that last one.

Setting: Schizo-tech high fantasy world. Magic use is common, as are races human-like and not quite human. History is controlled by the governments in place. It is said the truth is as precious as the tears of the gods. Information brokerage is a highly illegal practice and anyone calling themselves a truthspeaker is typically not heard from for long.

Story: In the beginning of the story, the initial protagonist is an only child and a prodigy element manipulator, one of two in his hometown. This earns them prestige, companionship and the jealousy of rivals. Above and beyond the swordplay his mother taught him. Orphaned as a young adult in an attack that claimed his mother, the protagonist later develops the resolve to join the town guard. A loner by nature, he often turns down promotions that would put him in the command of others, much to the dismay of his peers.

One day he spots a strange woman observing the village and covertly requests his companion for backup. The woman is powerful and agile but the duo use unprecedented techniques to subdue and capture her for questioning. Sometime during the interrogation, the town is once again assaulted by creatures, great in size and power. Despite the guards efforts, the town and its people are destroyed save for the protagonist.

In his adulthood, the protagonist is something of a scoundrel. As a freelance mercenary, he sometimes resorts to deception and extortion to get by. His regular job as a bouncer is earned when a retired swordsman turned barkeep bests him in a duel. The barkeep sees potential in him however and helps the protagonist to perfect his skills. The barkeep also has ties to the assassin's guild. Feeling that the protagonist is squandering his skills, the barkeep offers him a future.

In his initial 'interview', the protagonist is pitted against three of the top guild members in simulated combat. Using a device akin to virtual reality interface, they are allowed to duel on equal terms with the intent to kill. Astonished by the protagonist's performance, the guild master challenges the protagonist to a final duel.

The opening maneuver the guild master uses is a deadly skill that the protagonist recognizes as a technique his mother had shown him. Executing a perfect defense against it, both the guild master and protagonist are severely distracted by the prospect that father and son were reunited under such circumstances.

The rest is excessive flavor uncovering the conspiracies that guided the protagonist and the other guild members into the arms of the guild master, eventually turning members against master. Mixed in are missions with mini-story arcs, the search and rescue of another top member, freeing the truth and more, though including it all in a single post would mean many sleepless and foodless weeks of nothing but typing. Plus, it would give away all the story, too. As the title may or may not suggest, this is the first story in a five part novel.

the coming game Skyrim has a lot of what i like in it, and the next assassians creed game, they both look to seriously impress.most of my ideas have been said already. but i have another.

I like strategy games I also love building elaborate cities in them, standing back and taking pride in it. but i also like normal Action games and RPGs.I loved fable 3, I just wish it had more to it in the endgame.

if I had a choice instead of a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, howabout a dystopian post apocalyptic past.a Brutal war and the Black Death has swept over this fantasy world, leaving so much destroyed.The tutorial level is actually as your home city is under seige.you wake up in an empty building (depending on your race and origins) everyone else is dead from the plauge or the fighting. the kingdoms collapsed, royal lines destroyed.this could be your chance to rebuild.witchever race you pick, your abilities level as you use them, but in a less clunky, more fluid way.Two things I liked from the upcoming two games was in Skyrim being able to customize nearly everything about your character from bodyparts and sizes (this is an M rated so you HAVE to wear a loincloth you dirty people), to clothes and armor. including improving them on your own.it's always important to have a few exotic races in there too accompanying humans elves and dwarves.I'm all for somthing interisting, I'm a furry so I would like to see a few beast or monster races, each with their own starting place and culture.and to a lesser degree, your cohorts, allies, and so on.Also add in an adoption option for backgrounds, letitng you start in another race's place, having you be adopted by another race.More importantly once you get started, food, water, etc. they shouldn't be gawdaweful super realistic "you have to eat every ten minutes or die!" things, but you'll hear your character's stomach grumble, maybe suffer a penalty for every few in game days without food.more importantly you should be able to affect the world around you, fight, build, protect, create, or for your jerks, rob, loot, and pillage.Monsters roam the countryside, without normal people to keep them away, some aren't much of a menace, others, like undead are terrible plauges you might have to combat.some don't charge on sight, others do... depending on your actions.when you gain a following (and success brings followers good and bad) you can start trying to rebuild however you see fit.

Been watching my brother play some Counter Strike Source. Not too into it, and the way he plays is nauseating, what with how he looks around while he runs. But I was thinking on the way you can fly around the level after you die, and how it can be exploited to warn players of things they normally wouldn't pick up on.

And from that observation, Twisted Wreckage was born.

Its a multiplayer game for 32 people, split into 2-4 teams. Third person perspective, with very large, open levels with multiple approaches and areas. For instance, a floating city that has been beached next to a forest, giving you an urban environment for cat and mouse, a forested hillside, and an open beach between them.

Its a steampunk setting where humanity is extinct and their androids remain, still fighting the war that their creators started. You begin by making your character, which is doll like, fashioning its body both for coolness and performance. There would be power limitations and weight limitations that restrict your build, making it impossible to over power yourself.

For instance, better parts would result in faster speed, greater strength, faster ability recharge and damage reduction, absorbion or deflection based on what your installing and where. But if you want the best parts in your body, don't expect to be able to able to do much with it. You need to customize it for your equipment. Supercharge your limbs for speed, and have a modest pool of energy, then outfit yourself with speed boosts and short range teleportation, with wrist blades. Thats a good speedy melee character. If you wanted better protection, and a heavier weapon, you can do that. Or maybe the speedy character would prefer fast firing ranged abilities.

So far, nothing new, right? 32 player team based death match and objective based game modes, with custom classes, level destruction, what have you... but heres the catch, the whole draw of the game.

Every kill will make them stronger.

When someone is beaten, their energy is split between the survivors. They are free to float around the level, speak to the survivors, and bring up targets or other blips, to warn them or draw their attention somewhere. Every ability has 16 stages of power, and each death raises it.

So if you've steam rolled over half the team, the rest now have significantly better powers. That pewpewpew laser? That can now remodel a building with some concentrated fire... that big sword? Bigger and better combos, hits harder, smashes walls and floors easily. The shoulder charge you had? Goes further, bigger shockwave. Your zippy little teleport? Faster, can use it more, travel further.

In the end, there will remain a single Godlike character, with 15 spirits to help him, making it almost impossible to jump or ambush him. So your team, which so skillfully dominated the clash in the centre then tracked down and divided and conquered, are now faced with a character able to take every one of you out. You need team work to bring him down, because he can find you no matter where you go, come after you, and level whatever your hiding inside.

But wouldn't this cause team killing? Well... say a team mate waits for the chaos of the rush, then cuts down the guy he doesn't like. He absorbs all his power. It doesn't get shared, it ALL goes to him. Problem is, he is marked, for all team mates and enemies to see. The mark says "Hey, I'm a traitor, and if you kill me, you'll be getting all the power I absorbed, all for yourself"

Power corrupts, and you may be turned on by your own team for the power you stole, or maybe it will be taken by an enemy, essentially handing over a chunk of strength to them you cannot get back.

I have a serious hankering for a political RTS, if anyone here played the game, I can't remember what it was called, you wound up leading a revolt in one of the former soviet republics, and what you did and whose support you got could drasticly change the way the government worked, become the new president/dictator/primer/chairmen/prime minister, and so on. if they had added a military and combat element to the game it really would have taken off, but it was all menus and politics.the ability to customize your troops ala dawn of war has always been a big draw for me too.

But wouldn't this cause team killing? Well... say a team mate waits for the chaos of the rush, then cuts down the guy he doesn't like. He absorbs all his power. It doesn't get shared, it ALL goes to him. Problem is, he is marked, for all team mates and enemies to see. The mark says "Hey, I'm a traitor, and if you kill me, you'll be getting all the power I absorbed, all for yourself"

For some reason I see this being abused by better players to snub nubs. I'm thinking of it from the perspective of, say, TF2, where there's often great disparity on a public server between the top players and the bottom players. In that context, I wouldn't put it past the top three or four members of a team to divvy up the lesser players between them and teamkill half/most of their own team to use the power they get from it to better decimate the opposition, targeting the opposing team's better players first with their boosted strength to have an advantage then wiping out the lesser players who can't make the best use of the power they got when their betters were killed.

Granted, it's a strategic option with interesting benefits and drawbacks, but it wouldn't exactly be encouraging for the new folks to the game.

Oh, I know, still thinking of ways to balance it, but its a tough mechanic to get right without actual playtesting, which will probably never happen. If it was, however, believe me, the game would be tested, extensively. Balance issues could drag it south pretty quickly.

Thinking of another game mode, 1 vs 16, with the former already in the 16th tier, and the latter playing as per normal. dogs bringing down an ox, sort of.

I think to myself... why has no one done this before? o.O A Terminator stealth game, where you play as a T-1000.

It take's place after Skynet's defeat. Her forces, however, have not just laid down to die. They hold their ground and assault where they can, but without Skynet, they have been severely impaired. With the technology advancement and resources that have come to humanity, they now stand a fighting chance, and one by one, the unco-ordinated but dug in stragglers of the war fall.

But did you really think that Skynet had been so arrogant she hadn't considered the possibility of her main body being destroyed? No, she had a contingency plan. (Not sure if this is considered canon, but the comics say that coating a Terminator in living flesh is a long and costly process, so I can't imagine she could just tuck away an entire bunker of T-1000s)

In the event she went offline, a dormant staton activated. Inside was three T-1000's. Damage to the base and data corruption caused two of the models to malfunction and did not form correctly. Only one remained. It's one and only job was to find Skynets hidden backup fragments, items she had buried all around Earth, intended to be easily assembled at a secret location.

This T-1000 is up against unfavourable odds. Not only are the humans better armed, and on the offensive, they have claimed Skynet's facilities, and are learning too much, enough to make them a deadly enemy even to a T-1000. It must travel among the humans, avoiding detection and infiltrating heavily guarded bases, finding it's way all over the world, searching the post apocalyptic ruins of major cities and remote facilities.

-Deformation. Holding the left trigger lets you become liquid, wherever you are. Press to a wall and suddenly coat it in yourself, or stick to the floor, resembling tiles. Creep slowly across the surface. Pass gates and fences to lose pursuit. Jump and stick to the roof to evade more perceptive enemies.

-Fast and effecient combat. Your Deform button lets enemy melee attacks simply pass through you, while your blades can extend even from puddles, letting you surprise two enemies from stealth and cutting two more down before they can even draw. If you need to be in motion for longer then a few heart beats, your playing it wrong! Killing attacks and shoving attacks are mapped to their own buttons, letting you turn chairs, tables, boxes, or even people, into makeshift projectiles to gain a seconds breather. Holding the buttons make you leave your blade inside for longer, or turn a ragdolling chest punch into a shirt grab, ready to toss the soldier in another direction. Combine the two for soul crushing combinations, shanking a soldier in front of his buddy, lifting him up to drain him with the second button, and decapitating him with the Kill button, then tossing the body with Shove.

-Play possum. Avoid an unsure fight. Slaughter some guards and then drop to the floor, becoming an injured soldier. Let them take you to the med bay. Consider your next move from there. Or just kill the men who came to your aid.

-Deadly new weapons. By studying the T-1000 series, humans have developed new weapons with special ammunition that causes a thickening in your substance, making you slow, or even near solid! If one of them has a Thermite capsule to drop at your feet after that, your mission is over. There are also batons which cause your substance to act erratically, staggering you, cryo grenade launchers which freeze you solid, flame throwers or incendiaries which reduce you to a watery stain, ammunition made to blow your substance away in big globs, armor that can resist your blades and most small arms weaponry, and superior numbers and firepower.

The game will involve reaction physics for both enemy movement and your fluids. Fluid physics cause you to deform realistically, making a specialized rifle shot to the shoulder perfectly capable of blowing an arm off or reducing you to a wavering pillar of silver yogurt as you reform. You can be thickened by cold, thinned by heat, shattered, scattered...

Sniffer dogs who spot you out can be killed. If your alone, and no one has seen you, Deform with a jump and coat the roof. As the six soldiers come to check, drop, skewering two, killing another two, and finally the last as they turn, silently dispatching them. Check the bodies, find the highest ranker, take his form.

Whoops, you probably should have hidden those bodies, or at least jammed the door on your way out! Looks like someone found them and has announced over the speakers the deaths. No biggy, you can just find another form... but your in the middle of the mess hall! Yes, they've seen you, yes, they know your the guy who was just declared dead, and yes, some of them have special batons. One hit will give you a seconds stagger, long enough for someone to take out another specialized weapon, and with this many people, your guna be beaten to giblets and cooked on the floor.

Counter the baton, impale his back, quickly swing a table down the hall before that guy can raise his Coagulator Pistol, then sprint for the window, jump, Deform, and pass through the bars, reform in mid air and land in a crouch. The alarms are sound, soldiers are suiting up, dogs are being brought out. You'll be found faster, killed quicker, driven back easier. Your job just became a lot harder.

I want an open-world first person game with this. I know I keep combining a lot of elements but they're good elements.

After you customize your character and chose a fairly pre-determined background (Police, doctor, mechanic, etc) you get your own kind of origin story. Or where are you when the outbreak occurs. For instance the police characters always start in a zombie riot (but don't worry you have full riot armor so you're not going to get bit off the bat) they get a shotgun and pistol and can do to town.

I want it to be kind of like the Fallout 3 of zombie games too. Though I'm not quite sure how to implement any heavy RPG elements at this time. I kind of want originality to be derived from choices, perks, abilities, and equipment. I don't like stats, stats are passive little turds in my RPGs. Abilities would be like zombie sense, you kind of get a feeling when zombies are close to you but not in your field of vision. Marksman would put a target cursor up for non-iron sight aiming and add extra damage to iron sight aiming.

I like the idea Condemned had too. So weapons are broken into three categories

MeleeFirearmTool

Melee is your standard lead pipe to katana pulled from an antique shop. They break after so long without repair but are plentiful and good to have around.Firearms: Any small arm weapon. Pistols to sniper rifles. Without certain perks or equipment you can't carry as much ammo and you "pocket carry" it . So your reload time is abysmal. Still, a total firearm game would be possible, but you'd have to be fairly specialized in your choices. Typically one long gun and one sidearm.Tools: Tools are like melee weapons but they allow you to access locked stuff or blocked stuff. They have additional drawbacks though. A fire ax is going to be slow though it helps you cut through broken walls, a crowbar has no range but can help you through locked doors without alerting every former human and human within a hundred yards. They can also help you pull down fire escapes.

In equipment you have two kinds of inventory. Your person, and your backpack (whose space is always kind of abysmally small. Five slots max, probably) Though your person would come with chest, legs, feet, arms, hands, and two weapon slots, as well as two item slots say a radio and a flashlight.

Say, zombies got you down? Want a place to crash? Why not make a barricaded building your new stronghold? All you need is an item called the toolbox and some debris you're going to find anywhere and you have a safe building to call home. Store food, items, and other things. Find a painting in a museum? Take it. (No guarantees are made against complete zombie proofing.) I'm not saying every building in the game but a good number.

You do need food and water but they're plentiful in most cases. I'd write programming to have the game through a bone. The all important zombie bite. Well, you get a percent of infection, and that percent goes down as time goes by to points (kind of like regenerating health but in reverse. It is kind of your health.) So lets say you get bit and are at 10 percent. It'll go down to zero but if you're bit and are at 90 percent you go down 75. Plus special zombies only rear their ugly heads as like big people in real life. Zombie football jocks or something. They'd be tougher.

Oh some of the perks are for special moves like breaking necks or powerful kicks that knock down a bunch of zombies by knocking one into a few. I'm trying to keep it as real and serious as possible. You can sustain injuries but if you lose both legs you're going to have to find a first aid kit or drag our sorry butt to safety. Though that would probably only happen if you got hit by a car or jumped from too far up. Lose both arms and you're a kitten.

You have the chance to be a zombie slaying bad ass but you've got to be smart about it.

I've got so much I just am going to have to take a break here to get it in order.

One thing about your game got me. The origin story. I never considered that, and it's a fucking brilliant move.

Thanks, I figured a cop wasn't going to be doing the same thing as mechanic. Each of the origin stories would showcase different aspects of gameplay before you merged into the "main game" proper.

Like the mechanic gets to haul around in an indestructible car for about ten minutes. The cop showcases the firearms, and the doctor would be showing off all the neat impromptu melee weapons like fire extinguishers and scalpels. I'm trying to figure it out, I want it to play out more like a zombie sim than a game (but I'm not going to make it like realistically brutal in this hypothesis because I hate realistically brutal games).

Oh and classes have access to perks that no other class has. Like the doctor can eventually find stuff to make antidote while the other classes might only be able to throw together first-aid kits.

I'll probably be back with more later detailing your interactions with other non zombies.

I've always liked the idea of different story modes or characters instead of different difficulty settings. Instead of artificially raising the challenge by upping enemy health and damage and lowering your own, it gives you a different character with a different play style and an altered or new campaign.

Would something like that work? Cop is easy mode, because its a standard shooter, mechanic is medium because he has less combat skills but can still clock a zombie in the face with a wrench, where as the doctor is hard mode because really, whats a scalpel guna do unless you jam it to the hilt in its eye.

I've always liked the idea of different story modes or characters instead of different difficulty settings. Instead of artificially raising the challenge by upping enemy health and damage and lowering your own, it gives you a different character with a different play style and an altered or new campaign.

Would something like that work? Cop is easy mode, because its a standard shooter, mechanic is medium because he has less combat skills but can still clock a zombie in the face with a wrench, where as the doctor is hard mode because really, whats a scalpel guna do unless you jam it to the hilt in its eye.

And all three would have different levels.

I thought of it as emphasizing three distinct playing stiles. The game really harder not in a more-health way, but like dead space. They zombies do normal damage, but the supplies you find are dwindled to the difficulty you chose. I think of it as Easy being your playground, normal being normal, and hard being a real survival challenge. A mechanic can rig up explosives and cars with upgrades (like putting nails on a regular propane tank). He's good at causing mass but not immediate havoc against zombies.

The cop is kind of a brute force guy, that's true.

The doctor type is a stealthy character. They know anatomy so they're going to get bonuses against using weapons that cause blunt or sharp trauma. They can make up sprays and stuff that have effects on zombies and they can even sneak up and drug or sneak kill non-zombie enemies as well. They also can also interact with non-zombie people a lot better. Being a doctor they're kind of looked at as valuable all the time rather than say a cop who is never liked by some of the unsavory types of people and a mechanic who who is better with cars than people.

It's a lone game. Don't think you're going to party up and have a good old time. Lone survival is what I like and a lot of interacting with people is either fighting or wheeling and dealing. You don't last long in open gunfights so cover is good, but a mechanic could actually just bust into most places with his car (other classes can use and upgrade cars to a vanilla extent but mechanics kind of get this whole other person that is basically movable cover or a battering ram.

The cop would be the best for straight up gun fights, and the doctor would be stealthy. If you have to use guns you might want to pack grenades. Like a pepper grenade or a noise maker that attracts zombies to the fight. Zombies kind of flow like water in my imagining. They regularly break down chain link fences and flop over walls so you simply throw a noise grenade near the weak points in the fortress and zombies will come barging through with that little extra umph. Ideally you would set it up in another part of the base because then the zombies have to come from somewhere else. Leaving another area open for clearer movement.

I want each class to have their own way of winning the game too. The standard way is you can accept victory (you get a pop up) after so many days of survival. You could also get victory for killing some percentage of survivors (good or bad) and a ton of zombies. That would be the "Establish your own free nation" win.

The class specific ones would be the police organizing the military to start a kind of war, the doctor would develop a cure that kills zombies and turns recently bitten people back into humans. The mechanic is a little trickier. I had an idea about him finding a government plane with some kind of neutron bomb that kills the majority of zombies in the city. Still, it's up to the player to even pursue these quests. I want to keep it plausible without going into plain whacky.

*goes into daydream mode…*My game would be about building a village in the so called dark era. It would of course have DirectX 9-10-11 graphics, with pretty water shaders, think... age of empires 2 with actual non-cartoony graphics? That’d be it! You would start with a village and you would have to assign the peasant to build structures, gather bushes, hunt and fish on the nearby woods, ponds, rivers… there would be agriculture too of course! And they would have to mine stone and gold/silver and gather wood too. So… 4 resources!

In theory you can build anywhere, and you can build wood and stone walls and towers behind for defense, and of course gates too! Maybe even moats! *giggles* Then there would be the typical military units with bonuses against others, typical paper-rock-stone, it works and it’s fun! Of course the unit variation has to be the same or maybe a little larger than in the original Age of Empires 2, and no, no capital city bonuses or stuff like that! Although I do like the idea of having powers, maybe coming from different magic/witchery schools.

There would be formations and the soldiers would be males and females, and the females have to look like females! Hmm… what else... oh! A weather system, it doesn’t have to be realistic, maybe just random storms, lightings, raining, sea storms that damages everything and everyone, sandstorms, mist… There would be diplomacy too with some RPG ideas, who knows, maybe an ally asks for the player’s hand in a princess-like way as payment instead of a tribute *giggles*

Me and Calison did some brain storming for Twisted Wreckage, and he pointed out that being a Spirit is kind of dull... which is pretty true, so we worked on ways to make it more then 'fly around and paint targets'.

So, if Spirits in robotic bodies are the fighters, and the bodies die, why can't the spirits keep on fighting? Well duh! Their combat forms just died... but your in a city. A city made for and by Spirits. Every part of it has some small or great device that can be controlled by Spirits. Like, for instance, bridges can be raised or lowered, buildings can go into lockdown, turrets or AA guns can be controlled, vehicles can be driven, and all kinds of mechs, whether they be mining equipment or old relics on display or statues in a grand staircase.

So when you die, you don't take a backseat, you become a sort of poltergiest. Some of the tech out there needs multiple Spirits to unlock it, so you can't just lower the AA guns right out the door and start demolishing, they'd only get unlocked later, and by that point, you've got a dozen or so of these poltergiests following them, hounding them, looking for any chance to blindside you with a car, smash you with a mech, trap you inside a building for a moment or on the other side of a bridge while yelling "Over here!" and spamming big red markers for their pals.

Calison suggested jammers, which could hold Spirits back, which I thought was a great idea.

You begin by designing your character, their appearance, clothes, background and personality. You enroll in Bayville High. All of Bayville is an open world, so you can explore outside of school, or skip school, socialize at school during breaks, so forth. You don't have many days to mess around, and what you do/where you go determines a lot of your relationships and reputation, so there's plenty of incentive for multiple playthroughs.

After a few days to get your character grounded, your powers begin to develop, and its the same scenario, several days with different events depending on where you go and when, and how you handle them impacts later events. You get to completely design your powers, but only in their weakest state. You want extendable bone wings? Fine, have them. Rather they be made of energy? Sure. What, you want it to be energy leeching, too? Not yet (more on that soon) you want claws? A tail? TK? Light distortion? You can make whatever you want, and from there, it progresses naturally, what you chose getting stronger and branching into new variants.

Your build changes the entire game. If you want bright lights as your powers, something non lethal but great for distractions, immobilizing, crowd control, then you have a character who would either run or take cheap shots. A mind manipulator would be a more social character resolving fights as quick as possible when unavoidable, while someone with kinetic punches is going to be a beat 'em up and other builds would require stealth or more tactful fighting.

These first few chapters, with the social development and powers, are already loaded in replay value, but now comes the big fork. Institute, or Brotherhood? This isn't Kotor, you don't play each side once to get your moneys worth, each side is vastly different. Institute has more direction to it, closer allies, a safer home. It's essentially the easier difficulty mode, and its more linear. Brotherhood is hard mode, since allies need to be earned, your social encounters are much more loaded for conflict, and the story missions will be much different, with a lack of focus in the beginning, and as I'll explain later, the last half is completely different.

Now, your either training at the Institute, or learning for yourself on the streets, and your main goal now is either to mess with the Institute for lulz (Brotherhood) or respond to the hijinks, and maybe sink to their level (Institute) with the occasional night time chase scene or discrete school fight, and since many of these missions are different depending on the context, you also take powers into account. Going to the mall with a combat character as Brotherhood on one day is going to be an entirely different scenario if you were a winged character from the Institute going to the subway on that same day. No two playthroughs would be the same.

But now comes the serious business. Eventually, elements of the Brotherhood expose Mutant kind to Bayville. This is where you have a chance to change sides. A more fiery Institute member may agree and cross over, while a Brotherhood member whose not okay with it can grudgingly join the Institute. If your an Institute player, your still safe for the most part, but leaving to go into Bayville will cause issues. If your Brotherhood, the game becomes a sort of survival RPG, with your boarding house firebombed and now no where is safe from the bigots.

In this stage of the game, you can come across certain events that you could intervene in, like a Mutant being beaten, and you could lay the pain down, saving that Mutant but making things worse, be less aggressive and improve relations, stop a car accident or other urban disaster, like a robbery, and handle the reception, or just ignore it.

Depending on how well you did and what you did, new powers are unlocked, so your other playthroughs now have more toys to play with! =D

It's an RPG, yeah, but it would not be a stat fucker >: you punch, you throw, you get the dialogue wheel, you dodge, you use offensive and non-offensive powers, you run, you jump, you fly, you sneak, you use mind tricks, you super dash, you roam here one day, here the next, resolve this, intervene that, ignore that, theres just so many variables you could play this game a dozen times and still be able to come back to it. Maybe this time you can go straight to the riots as a Brotherhood heavy hitter, see if one huge fight early in has an effect on the story, maybe it gives you a few awesome new character creation tools for your next play. Maybe you could go the whole game without ever being exposed.

Choices people. There are no 'story paths' there's just a story. Yours.

Forgot to add, depending on how you played, when things get violent later, you may Mutate further, into something you can't turn off, mostly with more aggressive characters, making conflicts unavoidable.

Resurrecting this thread, and sadly, reading over I'm drawing too many comparisons between me and Peter Molyneaux Dx Granted, I'm doing much better then him by simple admission of how impossibly ambitious half my ideas are. So here's another!

This is going to be an Xbox Live Arcade game that will be hailed by independent game developers as the greatest achievement of ever for it's artful presentation, complete lack of story or voice acting, and over reliance on physics.

Geomancer.

A small boy with a large head, in a cell shaded world all in contrasting, moody colours. You wake up on a road, in the wreckage of a horse drawn cart, eyes carved up, making it near impossible to see. Everything is blinding. You wrap your eyes up and everything shows up as one colour representations. The carts wood is a solid colour, the waving grass, the dirt underneath, the flames on the cart, all like a painting. Ahead, the path winds along, snaking up a massive mountain, where a sanctuary can be seen shining at the top. There is no voice acting, no established plot, no other characters, just a vague quest to get to the Sanctuary. There are nondescript humanoids along the path that will violently murder you if they can. You pick up your staff and set off down the path.

Now with the world looking like a big 3D design model, here comes the physics gimmick! Your a Geomancer. Seeing the world as perfectly laid out elements of single materials lets you better manipulate them. Everything is controlled by advanced matter simulation, just like that crazy DMM stuff that Lucas Arts likes to flog. Each time you encounter a new material, you memorize it, and when you encounter a new force, you also memorize it.

An Element is simply a material. Denser Elements are harder to manipulate. The Master Geomancer could dip his hand in a lake and make it lurch as if it were a bowl in his hands.

A Force is something you introduce. Cold, Warmth, Wind, Electricity, Coagulant, Thinner, Vines, and even add and take away Gravity, if you can master it.

Say your first encounter is an old stone bridge. You've touched the path, and travelled in a light breeze. Now you've touched stone. This is all you have now. If you wanted to, you could lay your hands on the bridge and try to move the stone (simply exerting directional force through the material) all you've done is made it crack. It holds. What else can you do? Uhm... direct a light breeze? Very useful. Make the dirt road rise and dip a little? Master Geomancer here!

But wait! The vague shadow people things have found your cart! They'll find the bridge soon. You need to keep them away! Direct the very small amount of force you have down the support, wiggle until the stone cracks. Its not much, your practically a baby at this, but a crack in the middle of a crumbling support pillar holding up a very heavy bridge? Yeah, it comes down, eventually.

But maybe that's not what you did. Maybe you just tried to break up the top of it a little, so the first guy falls through, but the other puts a machete through your face.

Now lets go further up the path. You have SO many new materials and forces from your hours of exploring. You even went off the path a few times just to see what you'd find, and the strange plants and animals gave you some new forces and materials you probably wouldn't have found otherwise. You found a strange flower that grows in the dark, and a made a monster with a strange weapon fall and die, and got his stick that makes short bursts of force, and found seeds and an icy cliff with a really strong wind! Now you have all of these, and can manipulate those elements and forces.

Now you come to a still lake. You need to cross it. What do you do? With all you just learned, your full of ideas! You find a tree, whack it with your stick set to ice, to freeze the bottom, then whack it with force, so it comes down easily. You move the dirt beneath it to take it to the water. A raft! Nope, it rolls, you drown, try again! You freeze some of the surface for an ice raft. Whoops, it shattered, you drown. Okay, you have a raft! Now apply a breeze to push you. Your across!

Oh no, this new bridge looks unstable. Grow vines in the cracked pillar. They act like glue! You walk across, it cracks, rips the vines, but holds... for now...

Ooh, a rope bridge. This is new. The people things are coming across the bridge! Quick, add that new wind you learned from the cliff side! Blow it right in their faces. It only slows them down, they aren't be stopped. I guess if the bridge moves they could fall back, but... oh, wait, why are you blowing TOWARD them, you dope -.- sideways. There we go. Stumbling drunkenly can be fatal on a rope bridge.

Hours and hours later, remember how much trouble you had with that lake? Well that was back when you were floundering with your powers, now your a REAL Geomancer! Turn the water to jelly and just run across. Remember that pillar you had to wrench and wrench at to just get a crack? Just cook it with heat until it melts, or freeze it until its brittle, or now that you have the Metal Element, you can just void the rock altogether and give the rebars inside a good twisting. That'll bring the thing down with not even half the effort. Toss water into waves, boil walls of ice to slide down the hillside as water, coat steep paths in ice, call wind and create an electric charge, heat tar to thin it so its easier to move through certain areas to prepare for your trap...

And the thing that sticks with you the entire game, no matter how much you evolve as a Geomancer is that your still playing with fire. And you will die. A lot if your not thinking. You wanted to learn the Glass Element? Oh, well, fry some Sand with Electricity. You thought focusing some Electricity a good distance away would work, but when it snaps, the bolt arcs over and instantly kills you. You didn't put Metal in the Sand, of course it would hit you.

Of course you may get crushed when trying to bring some parts of a ruin down that block your path, your trying to strategically crack granite holding up massive weight. And yes, you burned alive because you set fire to a field to escape your enemies and got trapped yourself. This is dangerous stuff. Your one wrong move away from violent death.

Eh, even if you could get the physics engine running that smoothing, and I'd want this to be 3D, not a side scroller, programming the gameplay around it would be a pretty huge effort... that's I didn't list controls or gameplay like I always do, more just simple concepts that I never expect to pan out half as well as envisioned. Like moving matter. That'd be a core gameplay element, and that alone would need an insane amount of thought put into it. How do you shift matter in a three dimensional space with a controller? Do you use motion controls, like a Six-Axis controller? And if you did, how do you make minute manipulations? You can't have one or the other, both are essential.

But I can dream ^^ I'm sure there's Elements and Forces I haven't considered yet.

You may have to simplify the interactions - select your Element, then select what you're applying it to, and if there's any additions (like the metal in the sand in your glass example), rather than fine-tuning it.